Palimpsest is a triptych of horizontal plywood panels suspended in a vertical stack. Responding to a double-exposure photograph created by prominent WA photographer, Christian Fletcher, of cleared farmland overlaid with ghostly trees, the work removes the farmland, isolating only the pale trunks of Karri trees from the Boranup Forest.

 

The title of the work evokes a manuscript scraped clean and overwritten, yet still bearing the trace of earlier text. Here, the ancient forest represents the original inscription, majestic, old-growth Karri, cleared for farmland The replanted Boranup grove is the overwritten text, visible yet diminished. Hung vertically, the three panels suggest the shifting timeframes while the grid mirrors how memory holds only partial traces of what has been lost. By painting and drawing only the trees over raw wood,  Palimpsest documents the ability of the natural world to regenerate and heal if given the chance.